My Wishlist

Americana Motel

Stories of beat up desert cowboys, longed for road signs, burning embers and a tragic songwriter poet… Beats ranging from straight old school 2 step Country and Cosmic Americana to Punk… Flavored with an original sound the band calls Western Gothic.

ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Local favorite Wild Frontier have been compared to "Joni Mitchell's long-lost sister backed by a haunting Western band." Their recent album Americana Motel features the spaghetti Western-style title track and a New Mexico-centric reworking of Bruce Springsteen's "State Trooper."

“A sonic rodeo of original Americana, Alt Country Twang, old school Rock ‘n’ Roll and Spaghetti Western,” is how E. Christina Herr & Wild Frontier’s music is described on the band’s publicity one-sheet; a “Western Gothic” sound. This Albuquerque quartet was curiously born of a Craig’s List advertisement, and their latest album “Americana Motel” is an equally curious gathering of twelve songs, eleven of which are penned by Herr.With the first few notes, a distinctive vibrato comes at their listener, and Herr’s poetic lyrics serve to set a mood, and serve her well when they tell a story. On the lonesome, western rock title track, she is on the road looking for a place to spend the night, while “So many dreams shake my faith/So many thoughts ride my mind.” Romantic and soulful “Bluebirds” floats on pedal steel, and a haunting arrangement with locomotive percussion backs the singer on “Townes” where she observes, “Hey look, one more silver dollar/Shining so bright/On the cold hard ground.”There’s a Springsteen cover (“State Trooper’) and a half-sung in Spanish, south-of-the-border “Sparks Fly;” in poignant gem “Little Blue House” she says all that’s left of a relationship has got a “for sale sign” out in front of it, and “Look For Me” is dead-on honest about the futility of loving someone with an alcohol problem. Cool surprise wrap up of the record is catchy, spunky rocker “Who Luvs You,” where Herr confesses: “I talk to myself as if someone’s listening/…Just pipe down…there’s no need to shout.”